Review: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)

Shevek is a physicist from the planet Anarres, which has a single society without government. Everybody is raised from infancy with the teaching that every individual must have freedom, but that nobody may own possessions or impose upon each other. Objects, food, ideas, and even sexual partners must be shared in order to prevent an imbalance in societal benefit. Thus Shevek is not just a physicist; he contributes whatever his society needs of him at the time. Yet when he arrives at a theory that could result in teleportation technology, he gradually realizes that the eternal bogeys of human nature, including envy and an instinct toward selfishness, cannot be eradicated. Although Shevek remains a faithful citizen, he encounters opponents who believe that his Principle of Simultaneity must be stifled in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the people of Urras, the twin planet of Anarres. On Urras, there are such things as nations, capitalists, communists, possessions, inequity, and war, all of which are antithetical to Anarres's society. Shevek, steadfast in his belief that all good things must be shared, resolves that if his own people will not use Simultaneity, he will deliver it to the Propertarians, as the Anarres call those on Urras. Thus does Shevek become the first of his kind in more than a century to visit Urras, but he quickly finds himself out of his depth, among people for whom manipulation is a way of life. Unable to comprehend the reality of social inequality, he must learn how to survive while standing for people who stand for nothing at all.

Although I haven't always agreed with Le Guin's arguments, I find myself coming back for more. So far, all of her work I've read, with the exception of one novella, falls between 1968 and 1972 (this includes the first three Earthsea books as well as The Left Hand of Darkness.) In the tradition of hate being a variation of love, I think I'm so attracted to her writing because it handles the touchier subjects I appreciate in almost exactly the way I would handle them. She's the most talented science-fiction writer I know, so why does she fall short by just an inch?

Good news: in The Dispossessed, I think she finally hits the bull's-eye. And it's not for lack of trying, or for shirking the juicy stuff; once you wrap economic policy, sexual values, and science in the same package, there's nobody who's uninterested. If anyone's playing with fire, it's this lady.

What first impressed me was the ambiguity with which each character is portrayed. Shevek's description is simple for a long time. His life, habits, and tastes are each human and objective, and they build to a whole that is not a symbol for anything. In fact, it could be this uncertainty that makes him a perfect candidate to go to Earth. Anarres is held together by a solid goal of survival; Shevek intends to share his discovery, but he doesn't know what he wants, which makes him an outsider in both worlds. Similarly, all of the inhabitants of Urras are established like humans we all know, which makes them indescribable and alien to Shevek. But since we've already learned to relate to our protagonist, it's like looking in a mirror for the first time, without any disguise or prejudice, and not knowing what to think.

It's also great to see the underlying instability of Anarres. The subtitle for this book is An Ambiguous Utopia, and it shows. At first everybody is cheerful and cooperative, and you might be tempted to hail the society as the success of socialism's giving spirit or to damn it if you're suspicious of socialist tyranny (that's before Shevek meets real-life socialists and can't tell them apart from capitalists). But he discovers, with some help, that the manipulation of information, especially concerning his theory, is only mankind's oldest demon wearing new makeup. Power is never equal; even a supreme effort to level the playing field only distances the arbiters from the people playing the game. It warms my heart to hear a dedicated liberal like Le Guin understand this principle; there's an uncontrollability of life that the majority of the twenty-something demographic can't understand. In a way it makes Shevek all the more noble, because he would rather face the unexpected than allow his principles of indefinite equality to destroy something that could do a world of good.